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Sunday, October 15, 2006

Dean chides law students over ‘ghetto’ party

Some minority law students upset But the photos — in which partygoers carried 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor and wore Afro wigs, necklaces with large medallions and name tags bearing traditionally black and Hispanic names — upset some black law students, said Sophia Lecky, president of the Thurgood Marshall Legal Society.

I'm not going to particularly dissect or discuss this. I don't suppose my hint to "get a clue" will do much good. But why did I highlight that particular line? Cuz I don't like the fact that the AP used it as a header. Cuz from what I've learned over the last couple of weeks, that is code for "we can dismiss this because only they care about it and you know they're humorless, petty, and hypersensitive."

But surely to God someone else besides "some black law students" were upset--not that I give a damn if they weren't, trust me, this was fucked up--because that will at least give their righteous consternation a veneer of legitimacy.

The sad thing is stuff like this is happening all over the country. We are regressing as a society and I wouldn't be suprised if things got worse before they got better. From students putting on black face, to making inappropriate jokes on student run-television shows and newspapers, these little "Bush Babies" have lost their minds.

I hate racism, too, but somehow I get the impression that there is a conflagration of costumed racial imagery with the inferno over costumy racist imagery. It's okay and understandable that people would be negative about invokations of racist practices, but it comes down to the problem of just how remote the expression of racial inferiority can be from the practice at hand, while still capable of justifying outrage, upset feelings, and foolish commentary. Are they villains, or are they just foolishly trading on the culture's contemporary "in-the-know" separation of ragging on black people from the substantial belief in the inferiority of blacks or the practice of their oppression by whites? In practice, IMHO, the danger is more from individuals or groups who have both expressed clearly racist or otherwise hateful concepts, and chosen in the past to express their wills through coercive or even marshal force. While I find it encouraging that there are individuals willing to fight against racist practices like certain AP headlines, I am concerned that part of this fight may, if unintentionally, add to the liability of the argument against prejudicial acts, through its defensive dismissal of evidence of oppressive or prejudicing acts.